Lenovo Executive Predicts RAM Prices Will Never Return to Pre-2025 Levels
By
James Lucas
Summary
Lenovo's senior director of memory and storage, James Lucas, predicts that RAM prices will never return to pre-2025 levels, even as supply-demand dynamics stabilize. The article explains that DRAM manufacturers have shifted strategy from aggressive volume growth to profitability-focused production, creating a "new normal" of higher prices. This structural change is driven by the industry's pivot toward high-value products like HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) for AI workloads, which consumes significant manufacturing capacity. Lucas argues that even if supply catches up with demand, prices won't fall back to previous lows because manufacturers have learned to prioritize margins over market share. The piece also notes that this affects consumers building PCs, as DDR5 RAM prices are expected to remain elevated through the 2030s.
Source
bskyLenovo Executive Predicts RAM Prices Will Never Return to Pre-2025 Levelsthegamer.comKey quotes
· 5 pulledI think the new normal is that DRAM will never return to the prices we saw in 2024 and before.
The DRAM manufacturers have learned their lesson. They're not going to flood the market with supply and drive prices down to unsustainable levels.
HBM is a very high-value product, and it consumes a lot of wafer capacity. That capacity is not available for DDR5 production.
Even if supply and demand come back into balance, the prices are going to be higher than what we've been used to.
The industry has fundamentally changed. The era of cheap DRAM is over.
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